NY indicts 50 in feared gang Trinitarios on murders, drugs

New York.- The Manhattan Fedral DA’s Office yesterday filed charges of extortion, drug and weapons trafficking, and murder against 50 members or associates of the feared Dominican gang Trinitarios, based in Bronx County.

Among the group figure seven leaders of the gang known as the BTG, the DA Office said, with indictments unsealed after a joint two-year investigation dubbed “Operation Patria,” including the DEA), the Homeland Security Department (DHS) and the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Agency (ATF).

The indictments charge the Trinitarios with murders, attempted murder, threats to protect its territory in the Bronx from other gangs and to expand its operations, including to Manhattan.

It said the Trinitarios associates and members sold marijuana, cocaine and oxycodine and suboxone pills.

The Office of the DA identified the Trinitarios leaders as Leonides Sierra, Richard González, Jose Cruz, Carlos Ureña, Edwin Ciriaco, Aníbal Ramos and Antonio Peña, adding that some of the gang members belonged to another organization within the BTG known as the Bad Boys, led by Cruz.

Sierra, González, Cruz, Ureña, Ciriaco and Ramos face 20 years in prison.

In a statement, DA Preet Bharara said the agents seized marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, two guns, two machetes and several knives during the raids. “For nearly eight years the Trinitarios terrorized a large sector of the Bronx with their violence and drug business. Gangs such as this one are a cancer in New York neighborhoods. In the last two years we‘ve processed 400 alleged members of gangs.”